Clear as Glass: How Battery Storage Combats Rising Energy Bills for the Glass Industry
Leaders at major industrial companies recognize just how significant a role monthly power bills play, and are increasingly playing, in your budget. Today, rising energy prices and the volatile and unpredictable nature of the power markets have made planning for future utility bills more challenging than ever. The energy-intensive glass sector, particularly float and bottled glass, is one of the industries most impacted by rising and volatile energy costs on the bottom line.
Gone are the days of looking at energy use and the monthly utility bills as a black box. Now is the most crucial time to truly dig into energy consumption and charges to understand what is going into those bills and, more importantly, take ownership. Doing so is an ideal way for glass manufacturers to take advantage of the clean energy transition and its benefits to the bottom line.
Innovators like Pilkington (NSG Group) have already deployed on-site battery storage to lower costs and improve sustainability performance. Learn more about how it works, and why it makes “cents” in this blog.
Taking Stock of Glass Manufacturing: Energy Usage
It is no secret that glass production is highly energy-intensive. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), glass manufacturing accounts for 1% of the country’s total industrial energy use, equivalent to the annual electricity consumption in New York City. Glass manufacturing meets 73% of its energy use through natural gas, creating an opportunity to not only lower energy costs, but to deploy more renewable generation. The melting process makes up 65 to 75% of all energy required for glass production, relying on fossil fuels like oil and gas.
On average, 14% of the cost of glass manufacturing comes from energy alone, a percentage exposed to the volatility of energy pricing that most recently has been impacted by geopolitical events. Today, industry leaders are finding ways to increase their use of electricity in place of natural gas because it can be more affordable, stable, and less carbon-intensive.
The glass industry has done a lot to increase sustainability, particularly with respect to its usage of recycled glass. Undoubtedly, industry leaders see glass sector emissions and energy consumption as another opportunity to innovate.
How Energy Storage or Solar-Plus-Storage can Boost Your Bottom Line
As recently as five years ago, energy storage, most often in the form of a battery energy storage system (BESS), was not on the radar of most commercial and industrial companies as a way to manage energy costs. Today, however, battery storage, often paired with solar generation (solar-plus-storage), offers companies a proven way to reduce energy costs and reach sustainability goals at the same time.
If your business is considering a battery storage or solar-plus-storage solution to lower your energy bill, you are in good company. Businesses like Shell, Ford, and Pilkington (NSG Group) have done just that with a development partner (spoiler alert: that partner is Convergent Energy and Power).
Convergent, a leading developer of energy storage solutions in North America, has been in the energy storage and solar-plus-storage industry since its infancy, more than a decade ago. Throughout that time, we’ve worked closely with businesses to take the hassle out of energy storage by building, owning, and operating systems on their behalf. With battery storage, we’ve lowered our customers energy bills up to 40%.